As we start week 36 I awake for my midnight watch to find we’ve got a new member of crew aboard. Sitting on the sails fast asleep is a booby, nicknamed “Jethro” it had been following us for a couple of days and obviously fancied a free ride and a sleep being safe from a hungry shark maybe! As we where about to gybe, Jethro, was oblivious and wasn’t that helpful, walking about on the foredeck getting in the way, so Kieke went forward to move him, he squawked loudly and waddled back down the deck, into the cockpit, under the traveller to the stern of the boat and started to give Gavin, who was on the helm, a bit of a hard time. I don’t think Gavin particularly likes birds, especially on the boat. I’m not saying he was afraid of them, just wasn’t too sure if Jethro realised how important Gavin was. After we gybed, Jethro found a corner of the stern to relax and duly fell asleep. That was the most exciting thing that has happened on the boat for a few days.
I’m back on Mother watch with Kerry again, this time I get a long sleep, so Kerry wakes me up at 05.00, not much to do, bar make the coffee and serve up some of the cereals. Kerry has cut up some fruit for the guys, not much fresh stuff left. Lunch is a first for me, sushi! So I prep the rice and get it cooked whilst Kerry has a sleep. Then as he’s made sushi before, he shows me the ropes before I have a go. Not as difficult as I first thought. The majority of the lunch was served up on deck whilst we had another check in from Gavin, but as I feared the wind holes have knackered us and we’ve been caught by Seattle and GOSH and they’ve managed to get in front of us, putting LBS in 3rd spot. I hate wind holes. You work so hard and then loose all your momentum. Anyway, I can’t do much about it so back down stairs and carry on with Mother and for Dinner we’ve made pasta carbonara, it’s been a while since I’ve made it, so a bit of a refresher from Lucy and away we go. All but a bowl full left. Tidy up and make a last round of drinks and all finished by 19.00. Time for a long sleep, hopefully shave my head tomorrow. Just please give us some wind.
It’s been a hot night and with being on mother duty I’ve got a longer sleep than normal so I get up at 08.00 and prep for some me time as I’m not due to be on watch until 12.00. I grab some hot water in a bucket and head down the back of the boat to shave my head, and tidy up the growing beard. It’s hot, hot, hot and just got my shorts and life jacket on. It takes a while as my hair has grown a bit too much for a wet shave, but it’s all done and after slapping a bit of factor 50 on the old head, I sat outside and enjoyed a coffee. Time for a wash a change of underwear and my day clothes, a clean vest and a new pair of shorts. A tidy up of the bunk was required and set up for the heat with a new clean sheet on top of the sleeping bag and the fan has been charged and ready to go tonight.
Kieke and Michelle are on mother today and they rustle up some bacon sandwiches with coleslaw, a great lunch before we get our watch started. It was Alex’s birthday yesterday, so Michelle has made him a cake! I mean she’s changed!
The murder game has taken its toll. Tony was murdered the night before last and we voted for Alex as the killer, he wasn’t, so he’s now dead. And last night Kerry was killed but we’ll be voting for the murderer after dinner.
Our watch started with little to no wind. We take it turns to stay out of the sun, rotating the relevant jobs through the watch, it’s bloody hot and I can feel my skin burning, so I’ve nipped down below to change my vest to a T shirt. The wind starts to increase slightly to around 8 knots, so we take advantage and start to make some headway. By the end we’ve taken a bit out of Seattle but GOSH have found similar wind and have moved further in front. In the interim, big news, Jethro is back! Perched on the end of the bow sprit for the evening, he obviously finds it comfy. We have dinner on deck, a special fried rice and some of Alex’s birthday cake. We then vote on the murderer and we’ve caught our 1st one, it was Petra, the sneak. We’ve got one more to find before they kill the rest of the crew. We had a fantastic sun set and then time for bed, although not too sure how much sleep I’ll get in this heat.
Another early morning watch in and it’s hot,hot, hot. Not much sleep last night but we’re getting a bit of wind coming through at around 8 knots and making good headway, GOSH, Seattle, LBS and Punta are leading the way, with a fair distance behind. With such light winds, it won’t take much to get a jump on the other boats, but one mistake could easily drop you out the back. We’re in 3rd spot, both GOSH and Seattle have found some wind and put some 30 odd miles in between us. We’re all in a similar area, but a mile or two either way. The guys behind are all struggling and as time goes on, I think it’s going to be an early call to finish the race. The challenge for the race committee is the amount of diesel we’ve got left in the tanks. We don’t have enough to drive to the next fuel point so more wind please.
Well it’s down to the wire in the mutiny murder game. It’s Zoe, Lucy, Ollie and me left alive. I’ve only had one vote yesterday so well under the radar. I have a suspicion I might be voted out & killed so I’d better say my piece. As lunch time approaches, I’ve said my piece and suggested Ollie is the mutineer! Matt arrives with his piece of paper and Lucy has now been murdered. Leaving just Ollie, me and Zoe as the suspects and even after my plea, well, probably because of my plea, I’ve been voted out and as I’m not the mutineer I’m killed and the mutineer, OLLIE, wins the game. It was a bit of fun, kept us all amused over lunch & dinner and gives Ollie bragging rights for a few days.
On the sailing front, not much change really. GOSH have grown their lead slightly to 23 miles in front of Seattle and were 15.4 miles behind Seattle not insurmountable but as we’re all in the same wind, and with a possible short race, it’s going to be a hard ask. There’s not much been happening on the sailing front, down wind sailing with the Code 1 being fairly steady. The booby keeps coming back each night for a free bed, it had to be untangled from the side netting this morning! We saw a large pod of dolphins having a feeding frenzy out on our starboard beam but a fair distance away and that’s been about it!
Our late evening watch is very similar to earlier shifts, not a lot going on. Travelling south east, with constant but little wind. The benefits of a quiet night, is that you get a chance to look up into the night sky. We’re getting good at finding the North Star and the southern cross it’s not often you will see both at the same time. But very cool. Lots of shooting stars streaming across the sky, a proper light show and trying to distinguish the other constellations. Another thing that would have been interesting to learn more about whilst on dry land before we departed. The only other thing of note being visited by a couple of dolphins, couldn’t see them but heard their blow holes. It’s still shorts and T shirts at night, down below is like the black hole of Calcutta, luckily I’ve managed to get my fan working, it just pushing hot air around but it is surprisingly effective and helps me get some sleep.
An interesting start of the day. Not too warm at 06.00 and ok for a few hours but as the day goes on it gets hotter and hotter. We’ve been putting up the tarp tent and every day it’s put up differently, you’d think most of the crew had never camped before! But bloody typical! we just get the tarp up and we had to gybe, so down comes the tarp, we gybe and then put it back up again. It happened a couple of times on our watch, but it’s worthwhile putting it up as we’re just melting in the mid day sun. It doesn’t take long to start talking about that 1st beer!
We’ve had a really interesting day on the wildlife front. The boobies where back but we had some white ones join the dark grey ones, I’d never seen them before. We saw a pod of dolphins hunting fish a few hundred metres away, then Lon spotted what he thought where Orcas! Kieke spotted a turtle which we startled, the first I’ve seen in the race. Gavin was quick to point out that we didn’t really want any Orcas close to the boat! Then another pod of 15 to 20 dolphins came and played on the bow wave, well more of a bow ripple in this wind, for over an hour. A small bird arrived, it looked like a wren and stayed with us overnight.
David started another murder game this afternoon as a trial for the whole boat. It’s complicated, with lots of twists and turns and I think could be fun, unfortunately it was over in only a few hours. Matt told everybody he was a victualling officer, Ollie pointed out that he was the victualling officer and immediately nominated Matt to be murdered, both Alistair and I, the real murderers, promptly agreed and Matt was dead, he hadn’t been in the job 5 minutes. Ollie had now set himself up for a fall, so Alistair killed Kieke. The next vote, everyone voted for Ollie and he was out, leaving Alistair and I as victorious. Ollie was not amused. But we’ll see if it gets the go ahead for the full boat.
GOSH have passed the 1st finish line! I suspect race management will wait until 2nd & 3rd cross the line before they call the race.The challenge are the last two boats, Tongyeong and Scotland, they’re over 400 miles behind so I think they will call it to give time for the back of the fleet to get to Panama. It’s a bugger, letting Seattle get in front of us, but go big or go home. They went wide, took the risk and slipped in front. I just can’t see them letting us continue to the next finish line, a further 260 miles, in these light conditions.
Early night shift done and we crossed the 1st finish line at around 22.15 boat time in 3rd spot. We will see what race control will say in the morning. The 2nd finish line is approx 260 miles away, another day and a half. We might have a chance of catching Seattle!
With a lot of speculation on the boat as to what’s going to happen with race finish due to the poor winds, Gavin shared some numbers with us today. The fleet are so far back that it looks like we’ll need to continue sailing as we haven’t got enough fuel to get us to the refuel point. We currently have 860 miles to Costa Rica, our designated fuel, stopover, with only enough fuel to do 360 miles motoring. That means we’ll have at least 500 miles that we will need to complete under sail. That puts race finish at a minimum of finish gate 3 and at our current speed, approx 4.3 knots VMG, will take us 5 days to get there, bugger! Then 3 days to Costa Rica, then a further 500 miles to Panama. The challenge for race control is that Tongyeong are over 500 miles behind us! Still it means we have an opportunity to catch the two lead boats with GOSH 66 miles in front and Seattle 26 miles in front. Punta are 67 miles behind us. Keep on sailing.
We’ve had another one of David’s Trial murder games for our watch. It didn’t last long, about 2 hours! The baddies have won again! I’m enjoying the complexity of the characters, looks like we go live for the whole boat tomorrow.
Woke up this morning to a bit of a drama. The Code 1 had wrapped, don’t know the circumstances, the other watch managed to get the kite down, wooled it and got it back up again in a really good time. Unfortunately, the code 1 had been ripped in the process of dropping, we think on the jammers. A bit of over enthusiasm breaks things! So the code 1 was dropped and the code 2 raised and when we got up for our watch, they had already repaired the rip, and dropped the code 2. Whilst we ran the lines and started wooling the code 2, the other watch had started to raise the code 1 back up again. By the time we’d wooled the code 2 and had it back in its bag and on its bunk, the boat was back up to speed flying its code 1. A busy shift from all parties, but not sure how much time/ground we’d lost over the others. But we continue chasing them down with some decent wind again averaging 7 to 8 knots.
We had dolphins visiting us again. I think the bow disturbs flying fish amongst other things and the dolphins, not wanting to miss an opportunity, zoom in for an easy snack.
As we change over watch at 12.00, Gavin gives us a further update and we’ve gained on everybody. We are the fastest boat in the fleet by over a knot! The wind has veered enough to help us We’ve hardened up our course to go on the attack to try gain some advantage whilst we have wind, however we now need to change our code down to the code 2, because of the apparent wind, but also gives us a better wind angle. Let’s hope that in 6 hours, on our next shift, we’ll see the benefits. So down comes the code 1, as smooth as silk, the tapes are run as it comes down so done in seconds. We have found a few holes, so Petra and Kerry are checking and repairing before we wool and pack away and before Petra gets down below, the code 2 is up and flying. This all bodes well for the next leg and leg 8 as the team are getting really good at raising and dropping the kites. Now to try and get some sleep in my sweat saturated hot box of a bunk.
Another week done and we’re back to Sunday sundown again. We’ve stopped taking Sunday Sundown photos for some reason which is a shame! The good news is we’ve passed the 3rd gate in 3rd spot and are still the fastest boat in the fleet. The weather models are showing no wind over the next 48 hours so going to be another frustrating day of wind holes. But we’ve cut into both GOSH and Seattles lead, but you get that feeling, again, we’re not going to have enough time to catch them.
David’s new murder game has started. Everyone must select their role at random out of a cup. I’ve selected the “reserve” role, where I get a power given to me by the game master (David) which is Navigator and the navigators power is that I get one chance in the game to call out someone as the skipper. If I’m correct the skipper is instantly killed. We will see how it comes together, but everyone is a little bit cagey.
We end the week without any real change to the race order. We said at the outset, we needed a fast start and it’s proven to be the case. We will wait to see what race committee brings to the table next week, but If we can sail faster than 6 knots, I can’t see them cutting the race until finish line 4. As it is, the majority of the fleet don’t have enough fuel to get to Costa Rica anyway. Roll on week 37!
…….
Oops, best not stop yet, Monday morning at approx 04.00 boat time, we’ve had a message from race control and the race has been called at race finish line one. All the boats have crossed that line, bar Scotland and Tongyeong. So GOSH in 1st, Seattle in 2nd and CV25, London Business School in a very respectable 3rd. When we woke for our early watch we gybed then the wind stopped, not a breath of air, so glad it’s been called and our engines are on and we’re motor sailing our way to Costa Rica for a refuelling stop both for the boat and the crew. It’s been a tough race for me in many ways, with lots of learnings across the board. I feel I’m stronger for the experience and the boat is set up well for the next race to Washington DC. Well done to my crew for a great effort and well done to GOSH and Seattle for a great race.